Page 13 of Here for a Good Time

I kick him again, even if his answer makes me giggle. “It’s a sport! It requires both strategy and skill!”

“Which is why you’re the reigning champion of our apartment,” Zwe says. “But you hate water sports. Look, if you really want to join me today, then of course I think it would be fun. Your call. We do have two whole weeks here, though. Plenty of time.”

“You guys could also do separate things in the morning and something together in the evening,” Leila offers.

“I have to work in the evening,” I explain, hating how clichéd I sound. I don’t want to be the person who’s glued to her laptop during a trip, but I also can’t afford to not write for two weeks. I throw Zwe an apologetic smile, and he nods in understanding.

Two things stop me from insisting I’ll join Zwe and Leila this morning: one, I do hate water sports.

And two, I’d effectively be cockblocking Zwe if I tagged along.

I’d be lying though if I said the framing of me being the person who’s “tagging along” didn’t make me feel a bit left out.

This was supposed to be our trip where we bonded over fun activities.

“How about we go snorkeling tomorrow?” I suggest. “That spa is really calling to me today.”

“It’s a date,” Zwe says.

After the fit-for-an-army breakfast we had, we agree to skip lunch and regroup for dinner.

At the spa, the masseuse hands me a questionnaire where I can pick my desired level of pressure, and, using a figure drawing of a body, circle any sections where I’d like extra attention. I circle my back, shoulders, and hands.

“Do you spend a lot of time on a computer?” she asks with a knowing smile.

“A bit,” I say, suddenly embarrassed that I must be living up to the hunched-over-a-computer city-person stereotype they get here all the time.

After my first two-hour four-hands massage, I’m led out to the spa’s deck where someone brings out a flask of iced tea and a bowl of artfully cut and displayed fruit as soon as I sit down on a cream chaise lounge.

I have an unobstructed view of the beach, including of Leila and Zwe out in the water.

They look like they’re having the time of their lives, any sound they’re making drowned out by that of the Jet Skis they’re maneuvering.

Happy. Zwe looks so happy, which makes me happy that I was the one who brought him here.

It’s cheesy, but sometimes I watch him at the bookstore, juggling everything from stock take to the cash register to making sure his parents eat lunch at a reasonable hour, and I’m overwhelmed by what a good person he is, down to his bones.

I was never going to bring anyone else here.

It was always going to be him, or nobody.

Remembering that I never responded to Soraya last night, I pull out my phone and call her. It’s early morning in the UK, but according to Soraya, the concept of sleep is a faraway dream now.

“You’re up,” I say when she answers.

“Do you mind if we stick to audio?” Soraya’s British accent comes through.

She sounds like she’s at the level of exhausted where you don’t give a crap about niceties like Hello and How are you?

“I have to hold this kid with one hand and push my tit into his mouth with the other, so I’m all out of free hands.

I can turn on my video if you want, but you’d be staring at the ceiling with me occasionally flashing you. ”

“You have great tits, I’d be honored,” I say. I smile when that gets a tired laugh from her. “I’m sorry I’ve been so shitty with texting back.”

“It’s okay, I get it, you’re a big-time author now. Hollywood is begging you to write more books that they can adapt.”

Now I’m glad we’re sticking to audio and she can’t see the inadvertent grimace I just made. “How are you? How’s the family?”

“Don’t ever have kids. They’ll suck at the teat of your will to live.” I laugh, she gives a weary sigh. “I don’t want to think about diapers and sore nipples. Distract me. How’s your tropical getaway?”

“Good,” I say. “It’s so gorgeous here, I keep looking around and being like, This has to be some sort of simulation .”

“Mm-hmm. And Zwe?”

I take a sip of iced tea and pop a triangle of dragonfruit in my mouth. “What about Zwe?”

“Oh come on, don’t play dumb, you’re one of the smartest people I know. You know what I’m asking.”

“I keep telling you it’s not like that,” I say. She snorts, and I swear she can somehow see me rolling my eyes. “Besides, he’s talking to his ex again.”

“So? People talk to people all the time,” Soraya counters. “Last week, I was talking to Jeremy Strong at the Oxford Union. Does that mean we’re riding off into the sunset together? Unfortunately, no,” she answers herself.

“I heard that!” yells a male voice, presumably her husband, Alex.

“He’d be a midlife crisis. You know I’d come crawling back to you after a whirlwind month-long fling. You’re the love of my life, sweetheart!” Soraya shouts.

“The chances of me being with Zwe are as high as the chances of you being with Jeremy Strong,” I say.

Soraya goes silent, the only sound coming from my speaker that of her baby gurgling. “Fine, fine, I won’t push it,” she says. “How’s everything else? How’s your book? Are you inspired and shit?”

“I don’t know about inspired, but it’s definitely shit,” I say with a self-effacing laugh. “Do you ever have moments where you’re, like, What the fuck am I doing ?”

“Oh, all the time. At work, with this baby, with the garden we’re remodeling.”

“What happened to us?” I sigh. “We used to be so cocky. The world was our oyster.”

“Because we were young. We had all the time in the world.”

“The good old days,” I muse. “Sometimes I wish we could go back to that.”

“I dunno,” Soraya says. “I kinda like the present days. I mean, yeah, I’m older and jaded and it feels like I pull a new muscle every morning, and sure, at least once a day I think about leaving all of this behind and fleeing to some island in the Bahamas to become a surf instructor, but then I take a deep breath, and it’s like, actually, I’ve wanted this life for a very long time.

I worked really hard for a really long time to get it. ”

That tugs at something between my ribs, and I smile. When we were teenagers, I would dream about becoming a bestselling author, and Soraya, of being the first Asian woman to lead an Oxford college’s geography department.

“You get what I mean, right?” Soraya asks. “Poe… you are happy, right?”

“I think—” I pause, inhale, know that Soraya will detect even the smallest of fibs.

“I think I’m too stressed to be happy right now.

I’m just so…” I exhale as I fall back into the plush seat cushion.

“Tired.” As though on cue, the sound of a wailing child pierces the speaker.

“I think that was your son’s way of reminding me that I am in no position to tell his mother about ‘being tired.’”

“I will tell both my son and you that you have every right to be tired. Look, try not to think about your book for a bit. You’re on holiday.

Be on holiday.” Soraya’s in what we call her “Mom Mode,” which was a thing way before she became an actual mother.

“Have Zwe change your laptop password. If I can go on maternity leave for ten months, you can put your book away for two weeks. It will still be there at the end of the trip. I want to live vicariously through you, and I can’t do that if you’re sitting there in paradise just as bloody tired as I am. ”

“I know, I know,” I huff.

“I—fuck, sorry, I got to go. This stupid son of mine just sucked me dry and then threw all of my milk back up on me and… fuck, that’s going to stain. Hey, you’re not in the market to buy a baby, are you? Because I might have one going.”

“I don’t think you’re legally allowed to say that,” I say. “Go take care of your child. And remember that you love him.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, a glimmer in her voice. Before I can press the red button, I hear her call out, “Alex! Come take your offspring!”

I think about Soraya’s question, turning the words like they’re lines in a Rubik’s Cube. Of course I’m happy. The problem isn’t that I’m unhappy; like Soraya, I have my dream life now, too. The problem is that if I want to stay happy, I have to write this book.

Zwe’s still not back by the time I’m showered.

Still floating on a cloud of facial treatments and massages, I decide I want to dress up a bit tonight, and pick out the one “fancy” outfit I packed: a sleeveless red lace jumpsuit with a low-cut neckline.

I put my hair up in a messy bun, put on gold hoops, and for the final touch, swipe on a rich layer of Elson 4 by Pat McGrath, the vivid red a perfect match to my outfit’s fabric.

I’ve spent the last few months in an exclusive rotation of the unofficial work-from-home writer’s outfit of slouchy jeans and baggy sweatpants; tonight, I look hot.

It’s nice to remember that I have boobs and a waistline.

I decide to head to the restaurant early with my laptop and get some writing done before dinner.

Taking a seat outdoors—it would feel like a disservice to this view and weather to sit indoors—I order a yuzu cocktail, put on my headphones, and start writing.

I’ve powered through approximately five hundred words (not great, but not awful ) when my peripheral vision clocks a figure walking in my direction.

Zwe is wearing a light pink button-up shirt tucked into black trousers, the outfit finished off with a navy blazer and sneakers—all of it a far cry from the T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops he was wearing this morning.

One side of his mouth tips up into a lopsided smile when I stand, his head also cocking ever so slightly as though a random thought just popped into it.

“You look fancy,” I say as I pull him in for a hug.